I’ve had my Nokia Lumia 1520 “phablet” for around 6 hours now and thought I’d record my earliest thoughts.

(phablet is a term used to describe a huge phone, big enough to be a small tablet – hence “phablet”)

Good:

The phone is as solid and well built as other Lumia devices

Even though it is bigger than my 920 I don’t think it weighs much more; not what I expected from such a large device

From what I’ve seen thus far, the battery doesn’t go down unless I run the Waze app (which drains batteries even if your phone is plugged into a charger)

Reading email, browsing, and other data consumption activities are a lot of fun on the bigger screen

Not only is the screen bigger, it is 1080p so it is so clear and sharp! Watching Hulu Plus and NetFlix on this thing is nice!!

Moving from one WP8 device to another is a breeze; all my data and apps are in the cloud so the new phone just spent a while downloading everything and it just worked!

Neutral:

The GDR3 “Black” update auto-installed on startup, and of course it has nice features all by itself, but I had that on my 920 already

Though the device is quite large, I mostly talk via BlueTooth headsets or Microsoft Sync in my truck, so I haven’t yet encountered any awkward moments of holding a phablet up to my ear

Bad:

Stupid AT&T prevents the Data Sense app from installing to the device; my 920 was a developer device and so it wasn’t blocked (even on ATT), and I really, really, really miss having Data Sense already (yes, they say I should use the myATT app, but I’m on a corporate plan so that app is total junk, and even if it did work it wouldn’t show the useful info shown by Data Sense)

The screen is so big that even with my massive hands I can’t really use the device with one hand

A small number of apps from the 920 apparently can’t run on the 1520, though that could be related to me moving from an unlocked dev phone to an AT&T branded device where they appear to cripple some things

Though the battery life seems to be excellent, charging the battery takes _forever_ – or I’ve got a bad device, because it has been charging for a really long time and isn’t fully charged yet (and no, the Waze app isn’t running in the background :) )

The device is big enough to be somewhat uncomfortable in the front pocket of my jeans, so I’m trying the back pocket; hopefully I don’t accidentally sit on it and break the phone…

On Waze:

Twice I mentioned the Waze app. It is a wonderful app if you need to get somewhere through traffic, snowstorms, etc. The user-driven data sourcing for traffic and related events is all in realtime, and I’ve found that Waze gets me around traffic that other GPS apps (even with traffic data) wouldn’t avoid.

BUT, the Waze app does literally drain the battery on phones even when plugged into a charger, so it is something you can _only_ use when the phone is plugged into a charger, and even then only for a relatively short period of time (such as on your commute to/from work). Even then, I suspect it would totally drain a battery with a longer commute like people have in some cities…